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Internet Marketing & Affiliate Marketing Made Plain & SimpleWed, 19 Oct 2011 20:24:23 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5Effective Time Management Tips To Boost Your Productivity Overnighthttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/575/effective-time-management-tips-boost-productivity/
http://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/575/effective-time-management-tips-boost-productivity/#commentsThu, 03 Feb 2011 18:24:10 +0000geordiejimbhttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/?p=575I don’t think there is any skill more important to productivity than effective time management. No end of talent or resources will help you personally if you can’t allow sufficient time to get things done, especially in business.

Here is a two-step approach to massively increasing your productivity:

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1. Create Productivity Inspiring Habits

Making Quick Confident Decisions – it is typically better to make quick decisions and take action on them and fix anything that goes wrong, than to get stuck taking too long to make a decision and not taking action at all.

Not Letting Mistakes Trip You Up – We all make mistakes, the real trick to being successful is to not let those mistakes make us stumble. Accept you will make some and then, when you do, immediately take action to correct the problem.

Learning How To Focus on What is Important – Setting the right goals is key to being productive. Know where your time is best spent for the biggest effect and you will see an immediate boost in your productivity.

Learning How To Ignore the Non-Important – A lot of what we spend our time on doesn’t bring huge rewards, and while you might think it’s a valuable or even necessary function to perform, when you step back and assess the impact of doing it, you will realize you are mostly just wasting your time.

Production Line Effectiveness – In most business situations you are probably either doing something you’ve done a hundred times before, or expect to be doing many times going forward. Learn what these processes are and refine them; aim for production like productivity.

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2. Cementing Your Productivity

Remove Distractions – Don’t open your email, turn off your cell phone, use a Do Not disturb notice on your door, and set time aside for distraction type activities (social media, gossiping, the TV, or whatever else you find distracts you).

Learn the Secrets to Personal Motivation – Personal motivation is as distinct and unique as we all are as people – we are all motivated differently. Find out what truly motivates you – i.e. what causes you to get things done – and you will see your productivity improve.

Create an Action Plan – How can you be productive without a plan, seriously? Plan what you need to achieve – a life plan, over the next year, month or even just tomorrow. The more specific your plan the more focused you can be at achieving that next goal.

Break every Goal into Actionable Steps – make it super simple – if you can’t get a task done in an hour or two it’s usually too complicated. Make it simple and lay it out as a series of smaller steps or goals. Productivity is affected by your motivation, and the more often you can check off a step the more motivated you become to tackle the next one.

Take these steps to heart, build good habits and use them as a foundation to boost your productivity.

]]>http://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/575/effective-time-management-tips-boost-productivity/feed/1Why Effective Time Management Is Crucial To Your Successhttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/573/why-effective-time-management-is-crucial-to-your-success/
http://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/573/why-effective-time-management-is-crucial-to-your-success/#commentsThu, 03 Feb 2011 17:58:46 +0000geordiejimbhttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/?p=573To be successful in life one of the most fundamental skills you need is to be able to manage your time effectively. It doesn’t matter how talented you are, or how productive you can be, if you aren’t managing your time to give those talents time to shine, how much do you think you’ll accomplish?

Some ‘guy’ called Jim Rohn (have you heard of him before?) once said, ‘Don’t wish life was easier, wish you were better.

I like this quote because it sums up the very essence of self improvement and personal development. Life isn’t too hard, your job isn’t too hard, writing articles isn’t too hard, you just aren’t good enough yet. Don’t worry, that’s not as bad as it sounds!

Overall success at anything depends on managing your time to work your strengths and to give you time to manage everything else –whatever path you take: learning new skills or outsourcing it to others as examples, you still need time for it.

If you spend most of your time working on the things you aren’t so good at in order to make them as good as the things you are good at you will waste a colossal amount of time and achieve very little.

Instead, wouldn’t it make more sense to spend the majority of time on the things you are really good at, and spend less time managing the things you aren’t?

Here are 5 essential traits that help explain why effective time management is crucial:

Goal Setting – Knowing the specific goals you are aiming to achieve.

Planning – You’ve heard the quote ‘Failing to plan, is planning to fail’ – goals are all well and good, but without a plan to achieve them, they become worse than worthless.

Prioritizing – Identifying the most important tasks in your plan on a yearly, monthly, weekly, and even daily basis that will give you the biggest payoff for your time and effort.

Time Management – knowing how to successfully manage your time to ensure you get those priorities taken care of, and you reach those goals.

Knowing Your Current Limits – You’ll hear every personal development coach telling you that you have no limits, that you can achieve anything you put your mind to – and it’s true, but at the same time there is still a learning period, a time during which you can’t (yet) do everything.

Knowing what you can and can’t do helps when planning your time to maximize your strengths and minimize the time draining efforts of everything else.

Time Management is important, but Effective Time Management is crucial if you want to be successful in life, whether it is in business, or as a parent, a spouse, a friend – whatever you want out of life, you have to balance your time appropriately.

Time may be infinite, but your time is not. Learn to manage your time effectively, and get started today.

]]>http://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/573/why-effective-time-management-is-crucial-to-your-success/feed/0Resources For Article Writershttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/565/resources-for-article-writers/
http://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/565/resources-for-article-writers/#commentsTue, 01 Feb 2011 14:32:24 +0000geordiejimbhttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/?p=565Are you the sort of article writer who can just sit down and rattle off an article, right off the top of your head without needing help? Chances are you might have done this once or twice, but it’s not likely to be every time, be honest.

If you are like me, you like having handy resources available to help out when you need them – help getting that title perfect, tips for improving the layout or format of the article, a checklist to remind you of all the sections you need to include, idea’s for article topics, or useful statistics or quotations to include.

With that in mind, this article will list a few awesome resources an article writer will find useful.

Search Engines – having such easy almost instant access to a host of information sources and resources can be an article writer’s best friend. Be careful not to allow your searching to get you distracted though, the Internet likes to pull you in and drag you away from your intended use of it!

Brian Clark has written about it all, and you’ll learn something in every post – oh, and if you don’t know who Inigo Montoya is, you are missing out!

Article Templates – Lost for ideas on what to write about? Have an idea but not sure how to structure it on paper? Article Templates are a great resource for both problems; laying out the sections in order and including handy little tips for what to do in each section, a good article template helps you conquer writers block and many forms of procrastination.

Ezine Articles has a nice section dedicated to article templates on its blog that I recommend checking out.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary – No matter how good your vocabulary, sometimes we all need to use a dictionary to make sure we have the spelling right, or that the meaning of the word makes it the best fit for where and how we are using it. Personally I still prefer a paper edition, but paper or online is just a preference; the point is to make sure you use one or the other.

Spellcheckers – Even if your authoring tool doesn’t have a spell check feature, there are plenty of cut and paste online websites offering the same basic functionality. This might seem like an obvious one, but it’s too important not to mention, people notice your errors.

Creative Commons – depending on where you are publishing your articles, adding an image is a usually good idea – it can help the reader easily identify the subject of the article, it adds an extra element to hold their attention, and images can even be used for SEO purposes. I prefer using the Flickr Creative Commons images, there are thousands of free images you can use on many topics.

There are many more resources an article writer might make use of, these are some of the more basic and essential resources I rely on regularly.

I’ll expand on this post as i find new resources worthy of mention, this is only the beginning! If you are looking for a resource on something in particular let me know in the comments below and i’ll see about adding something to the post for you.

]]>http://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/565/resources-for-article-writers/feed/0How to Avoid Writing A Bad Articlehttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/563/how-to-avoid-writing-a-bad-article/
http://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/563/how-to-avoid-writing-a-bad-article/#commentsMon, 31 Jan 2011 17:45:15 +0000geordiejimbhttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/?p=563How many times have you searched for something on the Internet and seen an article right at the top of the search results? Happens a lot, doesn’t it? Now, how many times have you opened that article, started to read it, and either thought this isn’t what I expected, or this is just a load of garbage?

If you are writing your own articles, or looking to learn how to write your own articles, in my opinion, you have a responsibility not to produce a load of garbage when you write. This article will give you some guidelines forhow to avoid writing bad articles.

Before we look at how to avoid writing bad articles, let’s explore what makes an article bad.

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What Makes an Article Bad?

Too complicated – a lot of writers like to flex their vocabulary muscles, showing off those big unusual words that you have to look up in a dictionary to understand, and this is almost always a mistake.

In general, unless you are targeting a very specific audience whom you know will understand your choice of words, the best approach is to dumb it down a little, and write at a 5th grade level.

It’s not that your audience isn’t smart, but the more difficult your articles are to read, the less people will bother to read them. Kind of defeats the point of writing articles, doesn’t it?

Poor spelling and grammar – what goes through your mind when you read an article and you see a spelling mistake, or a run-on sentence, an incorrectly used verb?

It’s not a good impression to leave your readers for one thing, and it’s often distracting enough to the reader for them to lose focus on the point you were making in the article, long enough to kill any emotion you had created, or any inspiration to take action you were building up.

Lack of value – even if your article is perfectly crafted, every sentence is grammatically correct, there are no spelling mistakes, you’ve made good use of formatting, kept your paragraphs short and easy to read, and your article flows flawlessly from beginning to end – if there is nothing of value being related your efforts have all been for naught.

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How To Avoid Writing A Bad Article

Now that you know some of the major issues making an article bad, all you have to do is make sure your article:

Provides value in some way (answers a question, solves a problem, provides good instructions how to do something, etc)

Contains no spelling and grammar mistakes (use the spell check feature, and proofread your article before you submit it)

Is as simple to read and follow as possible

If you find yourself struggling, maybe making the same mistakes over and again, make a checklist to follow and use it every time you write an article.

If you need help with the layout and structure of your articles, look for article templates that give you a basic outline to follow so you don’t miss anything important.

Make sure to check and recheck your articles before you distribute them, and use the guidelines above to make sure you know how to avoid writing a bad article!

]]>http://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/563/how-to-avoid-writing-a-bad-article/feed/1Tips to Write Articles That Are Optimizedhttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/557/tips-to-write-articles-that-are-optimized/
http://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/557/tips-to-write-articles-that-are-optimized/#commentsFri, 28 Jan 2011 18:25:00 +0000geordiejimbhttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/?p=557First question – optimized for what, exactly? Perhaps you want to optimize the article so that it gets found in the search engines? Or perhaps you are looking to provide the be-all and end-all solution to a problem? Possibly you just want to rant, or are just practicing your writing skills?

Before you can optimize an article, you need to know what you are trying to achieve by writing it.

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Search Engine Optimized Articles

It is possible to write the perfectly optimized article regardless of the goal, but I see an awful lot of articles that are only written with the search engines in mind.

They are keyword rich, they have correct placement and use of their main keyword phrase, and often have a related keyword phrase thrown in for added effect. They use keyword anchored links to whatever site is being promoted, and have carefully controlled keyword density throughout the article.

This is all well and good for getting found in the search results, and for providing another backlink to a website, but just how effective do you think that article is at actually promoting that website, or whatever topic is being discussed? I’m guessing not very effective at all.

How much effort do you think it will be to write a keyword rich fully optimized article, and then go back to it and try to tweak it for value and content?

Content Optimized Articles

Instead, I prefer to go the route of content and value first. When I write an article on a topic I find the keywords appear naturally. Yes, I may have to tweak the article for the specific phrase I’m going after, but I’ll only do so in the context of the article. If the keyword phrase doesn’t fit naturally, I don’t use it, or I find a related phrase that does fit and use it instead.

Once I have my value packed article, I can add elements of search engine optimization to it. I can break it out into sections with headings, include a bullet list, add the anchor text to my resource box links and so on.

None of this alters the value in the article, it alters the format and even makes the content easier to read, a bonus on both sides of the equation – easier to read for my audience and better visibility to the search engines.

Added Bonus

The double whammy bonus of focusing on optimizing the content first is that your articles are far more likely to be picked up by Ezine publishers, and shared by your readers with their friends, improving the SEO value through the additional exposure and links.

What does it mean to write articles that are optimized? For some that might be optimized for the search engines to get better search engine rankings and traffic, for others it might mean optimized for the readers – an entirely different angle from SEO, and is the topic this article will discuss.

Here are some content related tips I’ve learned over the years when it comes to writing

Know your intended audience – Before you write any article, you need to consider who it is for, and optimize the choice of language and terminology for that audience.

Appropriate use of Keywords – Your readers have to know what you are talking about, in the context you mean it. Keywords aren’t only helpful for better search engine rankings; they are also useful to help your readers easily understand what you are trying to say.

This includes use of technical terms where appropriate, and not using them when inappropriate. This builds on the know your audience remarks above – use technical terms on a technical paper for a technically minded audience, and not when you are trying to explain a complex situation to preschool children, for example.

Valuable content your readers will want to share with others – Above all else, if you are writing with your audience as your first priority, write something they will find useful and valuable. Solve a problem, answer some questions, provide a solution, or offer step-by-step guide on how to do something they need to do.

Relevant content – Whatever your article promises, deliver on it with relevant content. This article is titles ‘Content Tips to Write Articles that Are Optimized’ – how relevant would the article be if all I talked about was the resource box, or just the title?

Make use of format options – Long gone are the days when anyone will sit and read page after page of unformatted text. The Internet reader wants to be able to skim read, scan the article for the important points first so they can determine if the bulk of the article is worth their time.

Use headings and sub headings, bullet point lists, bold and italics. Keep to short paragraphs and include a lot of whitespace to encourage ease of reading.

Check Spelling and Grammar – This should go without saying for any article regardless of what you intended by writing it – check and recheck the spelling and grammar before you submit. Use spellcheckers, read it out loud, ask another to review it – whatever method you use try to make sure you haven’t included any mistakes.

]]>http://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/551/content-tips-to-write-articles-that-are-optimized/feed/0Keyword Tips to Write Articles That Are Optimizedhttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/539/keyword-tips-to-write-articles-that-are-optimized/
http://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/539/keyword-tips-to-write-articles-that-are-optimized/#commentsFri, 28 Jan 2011 18:11:22 +0000geordiejimbhttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/?p=539What does it meanto write articles that are optimized? Possibly, for most people using any sort of Article Marketing strategy, it refers to search engine optimization – getting higher rankings in the search engines means more traffic, which is what we all want right?

With search engines in mind, here are some keyword tips that will help you write articles that are optimized for optimal search engine rankings.

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Keywords: Optimized Use & Placement

Keywords are without any doubt the single most important element to optimizing your article – from how many times you include the exact phrase and how many times you include related phrases, to specifically where you place the keyword phrases within your article.

You should aim to use your main keyword phrase in the following places:

Title, towards the beginning

First paragraph, preferably in the first sentence

Last sentence

Resource box

Headings and Sub Headings – if your article can be broken up into sections, using the keyword phrase, or very closely related phrase, in the sub headings can also boost your SEO score. This is especially true when used along with H tags.

Related / LSI Terms – Search engines are smart enough to understand that while not all terms and phrases are identical, they may still be related. A naturally written article won’t always repeat the same phrase every time, there will be variations, and these variations not only boost the relevancy of your article, but they help you avoid keyword stuffing your article.

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing, which is a topic unto itself (and one you might want to research further), which essentially means related terms.

Format the keywords – Did you know that text format can affect the SEO ranking for a webpage? Highlighting your main phrases and related terms adds emphasis to a topic, and can make it easier on to identify the intent of the article for the reader, and the search engines can understand this.

Use Bold, Italics, and Underline on your main phrases where appropriate.

Keyword Density – Don’t use your keywords enough and you won’t rank for that term. Overuse them, and you will be penalized for keyword stuffing. I find aiming for something in the 2-3% range works best – meaning for every 100 words in your article, your main phrase should appear 2-3 times.

Again, use of related terms and phrases can be used to augment or substitute for some of these.

Keyword Anchor Text Links – Most article directories will allow at least a couple of links in the Author bio or resource box, and some will allow more sprinkled within the article body. It’s a good idea to anchor one of these links with your main keyword phrase.

Long Tail or Short Tail – Almost as old as the internet itself is the debate about should I target short or long tail phrases? The length refers to the number of words in the phrase – one or two words is considered short tail, anything more tends to be considered long tail.

Short tail phrases tend to have massive search volume, but also massive competition, so it’s harder to rank for them unless you really know what you are doing and have a lot of resources behind you.

Long tail phrases have less competition but also far less search volume. Easier to compete with by far, and also far more specific, far more targeted, generally leading to a better quality of visitor.

If you build websites, you may notice these tips are more or less the same as you would follow to build those websites – Keyword use in meta tags, title, placement on the page, etc. This is because an article is essentially a webpage, and search engines rank by page, not by site, so the same rules apply.

Hopefully this gave you some fresh tips; please let me know what you thought in the comments below!

]]>http://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/539/keyword-tips-to-write-articles-that-are-optimized/feed/010 Tips to Polish Your Articlehttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/534/10-tips-to-polish-your-article/
http://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/534/10-tips-to-polish-your-article/#commentsThu, 27 Jan 2011 18:05:22 +0000geordiejimbhttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/?p=534Knowing what to write about, and even getting it on paper are only the beginning; before you submit your article make sure it’s a polished version ready for mass consumption with these 10 helpful tips:

Use a Spellchecker

Almost every modern word processing application comes with a spellchecker, so make use of the tools you have available.

Don’t Rely On Said Spellchecker

Even the very best spellchecker can make mistakes, so use one to catch the basics, but always manually check the spelling of words in your article, just to be safe.

Read Your Article Out Loud

Reading your article out loud helps you to hear mistakes that just aren’t so obvious in written form. You can often hear an awkwardness that you don’t catch from reading quietly. If something sounds awkward to say, it probably needs changing.

Take a Break in Between Writing and Proofreading

You’ll always want to do the first run at proofreading yourself, and in most cases people do it immediately after writing it. I find taking a pause or break in between writing and proofreading, and then coming back to the piece makes it far easier to spot the mistakes.

Use Another’s Eyes

The hardest piece of work to proofread is the one you wrote yourself, so let a friend, partner, spouse, or even your children read the work and ask for feedback.

Check For Common Grammatical Errors:

Are you bullet point formatted consistently?

Is the capitalization correct on your title and headings?

Did you remember to double space after each period in the same paragraph?

Make Sure The Article Delivers On The Title

A lesson common practice in proofreading a piece of work is to check the whole picture – did the article deliver on the promise made in the title?

Look At The Article Structure

Does your article include all of the basic components, and are they easy to distinguish?

A Title

A Summary

An Introduction

The Body

A Conclusion

A Resource Box

Check Any Embedded Links

How embarrassing would it be to write an awesome article only to insert a dead link in your resource box? Check the links work, and check they go where you want them to go. Sounds silly doesn’t it, but ask me why I include this step someday…

Check The Guidelines

Not all article submission sites or article directories are created equal – they all have their own set of rules for you to adhere too. Make sure you know the rules and that your article conforms. The better article sites include tools to help you determine if you meet their guidelines or not to help ensure compliance.

Proofreading your articles might seem like an extra headache at the end of writing the article, but the time it takes is well worth the effort – imagine the results of sending your traffic to a .com address, when your domain is really a .net; would you feel as silly as I did?

]]>http://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/534/10-tips-to-polish-your-article/feed/05 Article Marketing Advantageshttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/530/5-article-marketing-advantages/
http://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/530/5-article-marketing-advantages/#commentsTue, 25 Jan 2011 20:42:44 +0000geordiejimbhttp://johnsinternetmarketingblog.com/?p=530There are some disadvantages and many advantages toarticle marketing, everything from the branding elements, to the backlink and SEO values – used in the right way to achieve the right goals article marketing can be a powerful tool.

Here are 5 advantages that should interest anyone looking for ways to promote their business, website, cause or other web property.

Long-term SEO and Traffic strategy – Backlinks are key in any long term SEO strategy, and article marketing is a great way of getting them, especially when the right steps are followed in creating the articles and getting them syndicated.

Easy to re-purpose content at need – Creating lots of articles might seem like a lot of work but, especially if outsourced in the first place, they offer a lot of potential for reuse through repackaging and redistribution:

A dozen or more articles on one subject can easily become a free give-away report.

Your best articles can easily be made into a pdf and shared through content sharing directories.

Take your main bullet points and create videos around them.

Read the content out loud, record it and you have a podcast.

The list is extensive.

Can be easily outsourced – As noted above, most of the pain involved in article marketing is the research and creation of the articles; and this can all be outsourced pretty cheaply and easily.

Branding as an expert in the field – An article should answer a question, address a need, solve a problem, express an opinion, provide a review, or give some sort of useful value to the reader, and in doing so you are telling the reader that you are an expert. Over time and through many articles you can build a solid reputation just by expertly answering questions and concerns.

You may have outsourced some of these articles, but you should have done so with guidelines and instructions and have vetted the final piece before publishing, so you can still retain your expert status.

Can be entirely Free! – While outsourcing is an option, you can still create your own articles if you wish, and the only const incurred there is your own time. Article marketing can be done entirely free, and you can earn money and even be paid for doing it.

A solid article marketing campaign will improve your search engine rankings, providing more organic search engine traffic to your site, set yourself apart as an expert in the field and help you build a solid reputation over time.

Does a hammer work? It does if you want to drive a nail into a wooden board, and have plenty of room to swing it, but it’s practically worthless if you want to put a screw into that same piece of wood. Yes it will get the job done, but it will cause problems and isn’t the best tool for the job.

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Does article marketing work?

To what end I would like to add?

Does it work for getting me rich over night? Almost certainly not! Does it work for helping my long term SEO goals? Absolutely yes!

Now, while article marketing has its place, there are still several disadvantages to this strategy compared to other forms of marketing, and listed below are 5 of these disadvantages.

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5 Article Marketing Disadvantages

Time-Consuming – Articles can take time to research, write, and get approved. Even when you are, in fact, an expert on a topic there will likely still be research time – polling your market, researching needs you can solve, making sure the formatting, grammar, and spelling are correct and so on.

Not a get rich quick approach – Don’t expect to write two or three articles and get rich off them. Expect to write lots of articles consistently over time, and work on building your long term business.

Business Changes – If you change business, you may have to start over from scratch. The articles you have already written and submitted may not be relevant to your new venture, and the effort you poured into them has been lost.

Scalability – If you only operate a single website in a single market, then article marketing works great. If, on the other hand, you operate multiple websites in multiple niches you are going to find yourself doing an exponentially greater amount of article marketing to keep them all well promoted.

Duplicate Content – There is a long running, and still in my mind unresolved debate, regarding duplicate content – what it is, how it affects your rankings, if you can still benefit from duplicate content or not, and so on. Needing to write new fresh content every time can make article writing a slow laborious process, but it’s an issue you will encounter sooner or later as you try to scale up your article efforts.

Article Marketing is a solid foundation for cementing your reputation, showcasing your expertise, sharing your knowledge with others, building backlinks to your site, and boosting your search engine rankings, so long as you can overcome the disadvantages noted above.